In recent years, the capability to convert physical documents into electronic formats has become relatively inexpensive and widely available. Consequently, the field of document imaging has grown significantly. Some examples of these documents are traditional paper documents, photographs, blueprints, drawings and graphics. These are commonly converted to and stored in computer files as images. Using character recognition software, documents that include text may also be converted to text files.
In addition to images converted to electronic formats, many documents or other types of information, such as word-processed documents, computer-generated graphics or drawings, and on-line images, are created electronically. Moving images such as video, animation or film and aural media such as music, narrations or sounds may also be created electronically or converted from traditional to electronic formats and stored as computer files.
Some of these electronically stored materials, such as photographs, drawings and scanned documents, are commonly considered images. Others, such as video, audio or text, may not traditionally be thought of as images. Herein, any of these electronically stored materials may be referred to as information units. The electronic storage of hundreds, thousands, or even millions, of such information units is now possible on personal computers.
As the potential volume of available information units increases, a system for managing these units becomes essential. Such a system must enable a user to easily and quickly identify, locate, access, view or hear a particular information unit when needed.
Electronic document management systems currently exist that maintain searchable databases of information about document images and allow users to utilize these images. Some of these systems also associate the text content with the images to enable searches to be performed on the text of the documents. These systems are most commonly used for research on document populations.
The computer-based presentation field has also grown in recent years. The acceptance and use of such electronic presentation software as Microsoft's "PowerPoint" and Aldus' "Persuasion" demonstrate the need to create professional looking presentations. These systems are generally designed to allow users to create graphical presentations using text and images. Although some such systems allow for importing of external images, video or sound, they do not assist in the organization of those materials; thus, the user is responsible for managing the computer files associated with the material. In addition, the amount of time required to produce a single image is often significant.
Other presentation systems exist which are designed to present electronically stored images, video or audio. Two such systems are those provided by InVzn and Trial Presentation Technologies. These systems employ the use of bar codes or alphanumeric codes that are correlated with the stored images, video or audio. Such systems use the barcodes or alphanumeric codes to access or present the needed material. Within systems of this type, each bar code or alphanumeric code with its associated material is essentially independent. Most such systems allow users to assign attributes to images by zooming or cropping and to enhance images by adding graphical or text overlays.
Additional features of some of these systems allow an operator to create a script file outside the system that is used to build and present a sequence of images. In complex presentation environments, such as in a courtroom, hundreds of such script files may be needed over the course of a trial. Because of the complexity of these systems, many of them are best operated by technicians. The technician adds the enhancements to the images, creates the scripts, and runs the scripts when the presentations are displayed. The cost of utilizing a technician can be quite substantial and the time required to create a presentation sequence can be significant. In addition, since the names of these script files must be typed into the computer to begin a presentation, typos can cause unwanted delays or the presentation of the wrong scripts.
Most of these systems only allow the presenter to see precisely what the audience is seeing. Thus, the presenter must rely upon an outside reference, such as a notepad, to know what the next item presented will be. In some systems, the presenter may be provided with a mechanical or electronic switch that allows the audience display(s) to be blanked or turned off. In this type of system the presenter may then advance the presentation to the next image or revert to the previous image to view it before switching the audience display(s) back on. The presenter is still limited to stepping forward or backward one image at a time and the audience is required to watch a blank screen while waiting.
There remain several needs that are not addressed by these systems. When a large volume of information units is required, having thousands or millions of bar codes can be cumbersome at best. In many of today's presentation environments, speed and flexibility are critical. A presenter needs to be able to generate sequential presentations very quickly. Upon presenting, a presenter requires the flexibility to change the order or access many different presentations or information units within presentations without disturbing the communications process by blanking the audience display.